The traditional repertoire for Central Javanese gamelan includes
many pieces that can be played in several different modes and
both the pelog and slendro scales.
Working in the same scale, this kind of transposition process
involves playing the same melodic contour at a different pitch
level, making the melody seem higher or lower but still
perceivable as the same melody.
When scale switching occurs, the piece generally stays at
the same pitch level.
Shifting scales, however, is aurally more radical as the
intervals between similarly positioned notes in the two scales
are different.
Even though the contour and the pitch level of the melody is
the same, the sound and, in particular, the feeling or affect
of the piece can be altered significantly when shifting scales.

With the exception of one, all the pieces we will perform for
you involve scalar or modal shift in some way in the context of
the entire concert.

This short suite involves an old melody, Eling-Eling
and one, Sih, that has been recently composed by
Sudharsono Adi Negoro.
Eling-Eling will appear again in the program in
the piece Gendhing Bandilori minggah Ladrang
Eling-Eling Kasmaran in the same scale but a different mode.
The core melody, or balungan, is the only part notated in
Javanese music.
We include notation for both Eling-Elings for your comparison.

This piece is traditionally used in wayang or shadow puppet
theatre performances during battle scenes.
The name translates to something like 'angry elephants' and is
meant to evoke the sound and fury of elephants ridden by warriors.

The prominent mixed chorus in the second section of this piece
makes it a wonderful example to use in demonstrating the different
affects of the two scales.
After singing through the chorus twice in slendro,
we will switch to pelog.
The contour and pitch level remain the same,
but the sound is radically different.
We leave it to you to determine how the shift effects the affect
of the melody.